Earthquake repairs on Lloyd building begin

After the city restricted front access to the Lloyd Building and blocked two traffic lanes following Saturday's earthquake, the owners have begun earthquake repairs to stop a leaning facade from possibly toppling into the Fifth Street corridor.

The four-story brick building -- which for the last several years has been under the city's scrutiny for lack of seismic retrofitting -- was reportedly evacuated earlier this week, but the city has since allowed people using the gym on the ground floor to access the building through the rear entrance.

Owner Floyd Squires estimates that the repairs, which will involve pulling the facade in and reinforcing it with rods, will be completed in one week.

"They get a little carried away," Squires said about the city's initial red tagging. He said nothing fell over in his office, housed on the second floor, during the earthquake. Besides the cracks at the top of the facade, the building suffered virtually no damage, he said.

While Squires said the repairs will cost him about $3,000, the city of Eureka has estimated that the structure suffered $1 million in damage.

Gary Bird, Eureka's emergency response spokesman, said the city's estimate is a rough one and once an engineer does a complete analysis of the building, there will be a better picture of what repairs are necessary.

"That number may be high, it may be low, it may be right on. We won't know that until we get his analysis back," Bird said.

Earthquakes and the Lloyd Building have been an issue for years. The unreinforced masonry building, built in 1915, was even the center of a 2006 lawsuit in which the city tried to force Squires to seismically retrofit the building. The city argued that Squires should be forced to either retrofit or demolish the building, or give the city the authority to do so, according to court documents.

In 2008, the judge ruled in Squires' favor, indicating that Squires proved he was actively working on the issue, while the city could not prove that it would be able to do the repairs any faster than Squires.

"There has been no showing that, absent a catastrophic earthquake, there would be an irreparable injury to the public. The public could be protected by measures far less severe than those requested by the city," former Humboldt County Superior Court Judge J. Michael Brown wrote in his ruling.

According to court documents, Assistant City Manager Mike Knight testified that the building had structural deficiencies, and that its height and proximity to Fifth Street "poses a particular danger."

"These factors -- combined with the fact that the Lloyd Building occupies virtually the entire parcel upon which it is situated -- indicate that an earthquake-induced collapse could threaten the physical safety of not only the occupants of the Lloyd Building itself, but also the safety of occupants of adjacent properties, as well as pedestrian and automobile traffic on Fifth Street," Knight said.

Knight presented a short list of requirements -- having a structural analysis, obtaining building permits, submitting a compliance plan to building officials, and completing seismic upgrades -- that the city has requested since at least 1990 when the structural analysis was due.

The retrofitting requirement was in line with the city's ordinance regarding earthquake hazard reduction in existing buildings.

A final notice regarding the retrofitting or demolishing of the building was sent out in August 2005. The city filed suit in May 2006, saying that Squires had missed multiple deadlines. The earliest set of deadlines listed Jan. 1, 2005, as a completion date. While Squires did submit a structural analysis, he had yet to meet any of the other deadlines, the court documents indicated.

"Everybody in town had a deadline," Squires said as he stood outside of the Lloyd Building on Friday, which he said he has renamed "Betty's Building," after his wife. Many other buildings also failed to meet such deadlines, he said.

Squires' engineer, Scott Penfold of Penfold Engineering, testified in March 2008 that there were many unreinforced masonry buildings in the city that have either made no progress, or have carried out the ordinance requirements using materials and methods not approved by the building codes.

Penfold -- whose firm is also involved in assessing the damage to buildings from the Jan. 9 earthquake -- was contracted in June 2006 to perform a seismic retrofit design for the building, and he was involved with the initial analysis and inspected some of the building's bracings after the 1992 earthquake.

Penfold said he was still completing onsite testing and retrofit designs and intended to continue working with Squires and the city to finish the project.

Bird said Squires has not taken out a permit for any sort of retrofitting work since the lawsuit. He said Squire has, however, taken permits out for his other properties.

Squires said taking care of his properties takes time and money and he has to make sure he takes care of immediate problems first.

"I just don't have the money to put out everyday," he said.

City Attorney Sheryl Schaffner, who took over the case from the previous city attorney, said the city still plans to pursue Squires for the retrofits, but she is unsure when and in what form that action will take.

"The trial would involve a lot of resources that this little office did not have and has not had up to this point," she said. "That doesn't mean we've given up. It just means we're going to have another form of attack."

For the time being, Schaffner said, the city has other damaged buildings to take care of first.

"The city's still in the mode of assessing damaged buildings all over the city, and once we get a full picture of which ones have sufficient damage, we'll have to take action to take care of those where there are owners who aren't doing it," she said.